This is the first collection of Brian Herbert’s short fiction, a volume that is packed with highly imaginative, intriguing stories and ideas. In the previously unpublished “Death of the Internet: Under Burning Skies,” the internet is wiped out—forever!—leaving hundreds of millions of people unable to function without a technology that they have become addicted to, and totally dependent upon. Another previously unpublished story, “Earth Games” describes an alien world where Earth people are kept prisoner and forced to perform competitions with hotrod automobiles. Those games strongly resemble rush-hour commute experiences in major US cities, where drivers compete for lane space and make rude hand gestures to one another. A slight difference: the cars in this story have machine guns on the fenders, and cannons on the rooftops!

Two of the stories in this collection—“Earth Games” and “The Stakeout”—were edited by Brian’s father, Frank Herbert, the famed author of Dune, in the early 1980s. The stories were then rewritten by Brian, with those expert comments in mind.

A New York Times-bestselling author, Brian has written many works of fiction and non-fiction. He is best known as the coauthor of 14 new Dune-series novels, written with Kevin J. Anderson. In his solo books, Brian is known for addressing important social issues, such as the environment, politics, and religion. In his highly original novel Ocean, the ocean and its sea creatures declare war on human civilization, in retaliation for pollution and other human-caused abuses that are fouling the waters of the planet. In the Timeweb trilogy, he postulates that the entire galaxy is a single ecosystem, and is crumbling in a huge environmental disaster. In The Stolen Gospels series, Brian writes about a group of women who have discovered female-oriented gospels that were stolen centuries ago, and were never included in the Bible—gospels that describe female apostles of Jesus. In The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma, the American continents are a green “utopia,” but the government is a police state, with severe penalties for infractions—violators are recycled!

In Dangerous Worlds, the characters find themselves in a universe of deep, deep trouble, and must try to get out of seemingly impossible situations. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t!